Sussex in the High Middle Ages
[6] This ensured supplies for the army, and as Harold and his family held many of the lands in the area, it weakened William's opponent and made him more likely to attack to put an end to the raiding.
[11] After regrouping following the battle of Hastings, William headed to Kent and London with his main army while detachments were sent into Sussex to act as a rearguard.
Members of King Harold Godwinson's family sought refuge in Ireland and used their bases in that country for unsuccessful invasions of England.
Some of the English migrants were settled in Byzantine frontier regions on the Black Sea coast referred to as Nova Anglia or New England.
[25] In the rebellion of 1088, the rebels, led by William the Conqueror's half-brothers Odo of Bayeux[26] and Robert, Count of Mortain, and lord of the rape of Pevensey, with Odo the stronger of the two and the leader, decided to band together to dispose of young King William II and unite Normandy and England under a single king, the eldest Duke Robert.
The forces of Rufus and de Warenne surrounded Pevensey Castle in a six-week siege, starving its inhabitants and capturing the rebel leader Odo.
On 30 September 1139 Empress Matilda and her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, landed near Arundel with a force of 140 knights,[31] thereby beginning in earnest the civil war of the Anarchy in England.
[32] Adeliza received Matilda and Robert at her home in Arundel in defiance of the wishes of her second husband, who was a staunch supporter of King Stephen.
Trying to explain Adeliza's actions, John of Worcester suggests that "she feared the king’s majesty and worried that she might lose the great estate she held throughout England".
He also mentions Adeliza's excuse to King Stephen: "She swore on oath that his enemies had not come to England on her account but that she had simply given them hospitality as persons of high dignity once close to her."
While Matilda stayed at Arundel Castle, Robert marched north-west to Wallingford and Bristol, hoping to raise support for the rebellion and to link up with Miles of Gloucester, who took the opportunity to renounce his fealty to the king.
Stephen also faced a military dilemma at Arundel—the castle was considered almost impregnable, and he may have been worried that he was tying down his army in the south whilst Robert roamed freely in the west.
In 1147, following a rebellion by Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke, King Stephen blockaded Pevensey Castle until its inhabitants were starved into submission.
In 1153 William d'Aubigny helped arrange the truce between Stephen and Henry Plantagenet, known as the Treaty of Wallingford, which brought an end to The Anarchy.
[33] On 20 June 1199, after John's coronation on 6 April, the king set sail from New Shoreham to Dieppe with what Ralph of Coggeshall described as 'a mighty English host'.
Of the counties where meaningful data has been recorded, the economies of only Yorkshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire which had been devastated through the harrying of the north fared worse than Sussex.
[40] William assigned large tracts of land amongst the Norman elite, creating vast estates in some areas, particularly in Sussex and the Welsh marches.
[44] William de Braose established the administrative centre of the rape at Bramber where he built a bridge and brought in a toll on all ships entering the port of Steyning.
The abbey was built on the site of the Battle of Hastings after Pope Alexander II had ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many people during their conquest of England.
It was set within an extensive walled and gated precinct laid out in a commanding location fronting the tidal shore-line at the head of the Ouse valley to the south of Lewes.
In the Rape of Pevensey, Herluin de Conteville, step-father to William the Conqueror, established Wilmington Priory as a monastic grange, which his son, Robert, Count of Mortain presented to Grestain Abbey in Normandy.
Various Sussex ports, including Winchelsea, Shoreham and Lewes, were embarkation points to cross the English Channel and connect to the Way of St James via the Via Turonensis through the Kingdom of France.
[69] Evidence of this is seen in Domesday Book by the survey of Worth and Lodsworth under Surrey, and also by the fact that as late as 1834 the present parishes of North and South Ambersham in Sussex were part of Hampshire.
[18] In common with some other areas of eastern England like Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Essex and Kent, Sussex received some of the most migrants from what is now France after the Norman conquest.
Other populous areas of England at this time included eastern East Anglia, parts of Kent and a series of districts between Somerset and the Humber Estuary in Yorkshire.
[41] As with other parts of England, the tenants-in-chief of Sussex would have attended the curia regis, the successor to the Witenagemot of the Anglo Saxon period and the precursor to the English parliament.
[86] By the 12th century, churches in Sussex were built less exaggeratedly tall in proportion and with more ornamental designs[87] in the transitional style, as architecture moved from Norman towards Gothic.
Three examples of rounded west church towers of the type most commonly found in East Anglia exist around the lower Ouse valley at Piddinghoe, Southease and St Michael's at Lewes.
Buildings using Caen stone include Chichester Cathedral, Lewes Priory, Battle Abbey and the churches of Steyning, Kingston Buci and Buncton.
[80] With its own masons' yard, Lewes Priory manufactured decorated glazed floor tiles and had a school of sacred painting that worked throughout Sussex.
